How To: Get Your Toaster and Your Toilet to Tweet

A few days ago I wrote an article entitled, “How To: Get Your Dog to Tweet.” It was a fun article to write because there are actually dogs on Twitter now that are tweeting through this new collar. For example, check out @LittleButtons.

So what about the other things in your house besides your dog? Would you like your toaster or washing machine to tweet? How about your toilet? It can all be done. Now, you can become one with all the gadgets in your house and everything can be tweeting up a storm. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? (omg… can’t stop laughing here)

According to http://howto.wired.com, “Just about any device can be enabled to send and receive tweets by using simple hardware platforms called microcontrollers. These tiny computers can be plugged into different modules: a motor, a thermostat, a light-sensitive cell – to detect a change in the environment or in the device’s operating state. The microcontroller can then be programmed to send a tweet whenever something specific changes.”

In other words, the washing machine switched to the rinse cycle? Well, it will send a tweet. The toilet gets flushed, yep, it’s gonna tweet. The TIVO changes the channel on the television, here comes another tweet. Here are some Twitter accounts of appliances that are doing a great job tweeting: @mytoaster, @PiMPY3WASH, @hacklabTOilet and @EDogFeeder. This link explains how to get your toaster to tweet: http://www.instructables.com This link explains how to get your entire home office to respond to your tweets: http://matthewmorey.com

You can also get some great DIY information on the microcontrollers, sensors and network connections along with a bunch of other helpful links at the wired.com link above. It all makes me wonder about Twitter’s numbers. If some of the Twitter accounts are dogs and some are appliances, and we all know there are a bunch of bots and auto tweets, then I wonder how many Twitter accounts are actually human beings tweeting to each other. I guess it’s a sign of the future; we are now officially interacting with non-humans and enjoying it.

Thanks @MattsOffice for showing us how to get our office equipment to obey our tweets in this video:

Thank you to http://www.flickr.com/photos/19428551@N00/1009374908/ for the great red toaster photo above!